18 U.S.C. § 1118
Section 1118 · Murder by a Federal prisoner
This is § 60005 of the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994
Amended 1 time on record
Applied in 15 court decisions — leading case United States v. Battle (1999)
Most recently applied in United States v. Antoine Thompson (October 2024)
How often courts cite this section
Court decisions citing this, by year.Markers show enactment, consequential amendments, and circuit splits over this section — watch for a citation surge after a change or a disagreement. The dip in the last several years is a data-coverage gap, not a real trend — our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so recent citations are undercounted.
(a) Offense.—A person who, while confined in a Federal correctional institution under a sentence for a term of life imprisonment, commits the murder of another shall be punished by death or by life imprisonment.
(b) Definitions.—In this section—
“Federal correctional institution” means any Federal prison, Federal correctional facility, Federal community program center, or Federal halfway house.
“murder” means a first degree or second degree murder (as defined in section 1111).
“term of life imprisonment” means a sentence for the term of natural life, a sentence commuted to natural life, an indeterminate term of a minimum of at least fifteen years and a maximum of life, or an unexecuted sentence of death.
Editorial notes U.S. Code · Office of the Law Revision Counsel
Prior Provisions
Another section 1118 was renumbered section 1122 of this title.